Society and Culture

By developing a stronger understanding of what works and what does not in combatting child marriage, policymakers and civil society leaders will be better equipped to end child marriage. Senior Fellow Gayle Tzemach Lemmon and Research Associate Lynn S. ElHarake identify the drivers of child marriage and the factors that can curb it.

Isobel Coleman hosts William Ryerson, founder and president of the Population Media Center, and Roshaneh Zafar, founder and managing director of the Kashf Foundation, for a discussion about harnessing popular media for social change, with emphasis on South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America.

Brian J. Grim leads a conversation on a recent study by the Pew Research Center that indicates religious hostilities have reached a six-year peak, as part of CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Conference Call series.

The World Economic Outlook (WEO) presents the IMF staff's analysis and projections of economic developments at the global level, in major country groups (classified by region, stage of development, etc.), and in many individual countries. It focuses on major economic policy issues as well as on the analysis of economic developments and prospects. It is usually prepared twice a year, as documentation for meetings of the International Monetary and Financial Committee, and forms the main instrument of the IMF's global surveillance activities.

UN High Commissioner for Refugees produces an Asylum Trends reports, which summarizes patterns in the number of individual asylum claims submitted during the previous year in Europe and selected non-European countries.

Princeton University's Robert P. George leads a conversation on U.S. international religious freedom policy fifteen years after the International Religious Freedom Act, as part of CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Conference Call series.

With an international team of investigators still seemingly baffled about what happened to Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, which disappeared over the weekend, relatives of the passengers and diplomats from countries touched by the mishap have vented their frustration with the Malaysian government.

On May 29, 2013, British immigration officers raided the Alternative Tuck Shop, a café just down the road from Oxford University's economics department, where South Asian and Middle Eastern employees serve tea, scones, and sandwiches.

There is something irresistible about the story of Iran's last shah, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. The pampered, foreign-educated son of a dour autocrat, Mohammad Reza ascended to the Peacock Throne in 1941, at age 21.

For months ahead of the Winter Olympics in Russia, politicians and the media discussed the possibility of a terrorist attacks during the games. Micah Zenko reveals the truth about the likelihood of a terrorist attack in Sochi, analyzes how policymakers and the media misinformed the public, and discusses how the situation could have been handled better.

"The campaign of looting and murder in recent weeks has led to an alarming demographic crisis in the Central African Republic. About 1 million of its 4.6 million people have been displaced and at least 2,000 have been killed."

"The UN's current polio vaccination program—sponsored by UNICEF and delivered in UN-financed convoys and flights—is fully orchestrated by the Syrian government, and in opposition-held areas, it is dependent for administration on volunteers from the government-dominated Syrian Arab Red Crescent (SARC). SARC's president, Abdul Rahman Attar, is closely tied to the government, and even has his own pharmaceutical company, which has influenced the preference given to regime territory in the administration of polio vaccines during these last three years."

Alyssa Ayres leads a conversation on the upcoming elections in India and discusses the role of religion and caste in regional politics, as part of CFR's Religion and Foreign Policy Conference Call series.

This is an idea first proposed by Vice President Biden in 2006 when he was a senator. It was a non-starter then and it won't work any better today. While the Kurdish region in the north is already almost an independent country, neither Shiites nor Sunnis are interested in splitting up the rest of Iraq—something that would be hard to do, in any case, because the two sects are intermingled in Baghdad and other areas. Just as the solution to Iraq's last major bout of bloodletting, in 2003-2007, wasn't partition, so it isn't today.

CFR Senior Fellow Gayle Lemmon moderates a conversation with Giovanna Lauro, deputy director of Promundo-U.S., and Alaka Basu, senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation and professor at Cornell University, on child marriage and the search for policy consensus on eliminating the practice globally.

CFR Senior Fellow Gayle Lemmon moderates a conversation with Giovanna Lauro, deputy director of Promundo-U.S., and Alaka Basu, senior fellow at the United Nations Foundation and professor at Cornell University, on child marriage and the search for policy consensus on eliminating the practice globally.

"Of the approximately hundred thousand Jews in Iran at the time of the revolution, only twenty thousand remain. They…no longer felt welcome in their homeland. Today, despite promises by the new president, Hassan Rouhani, to protect the freedom of ethnic and religious minorities (and the appointment of an aide to focus on their affairs), the persecution continues."

CFR Experts Guide

The Council on Foreign Relations' David Rockefeller Studies Program—CFR's "think tank"—is home to more than seventy full-time, adjunct, and visiting scholars and practitioners (called "fellows"). Their expertise covers the world's major regions as well as the critical issues shaping today's global agenda. Download the printable CFR Experts Guide.

New Council Special Reports

Campbell evaluates the implications of the Boko Haram insurgency and recommends that the United States support Nigerian efforts to address the drivers of Boko Haram, such as poverty and corruption, and to foster stronger ties with Nigerian civil society.

Koblentz argues that the United States should work with other nuclear-armed states to manage threats to nuclear stability in the near term and establish processes for multilateral arms control efforts over the longer term.

The authors argue that it is essential to begin working now to expand and establish rules and norms governing armed drones, thereby creating standards of behavior that other countries will be more likely to follow.

2014 Annual Report

Learn more about CFR’s mission and its work over the past year in the 2014 Annual Report. The Annual Report spotlights new initiatives, high-profile events, and authoritative scholarship from CFR experts, and includes a message from CFR President Richard N. Haass.Read and download »